An amburbial sacrifice, also known as amburbia or amburbale sacrum, was an ancient Roman

Ancient Rome

Ancient Rome was a thriving civilization that grew on the Italian Peninsula as early as the 8th century BC. Located along the Mediterranean Sea and centered on the city of Rome, it expanded to one of the largest empires in the ancient world....

 religious festival

Festival

A festival or gala is an event, usually and ordinarily staged by a local community, which centers on and celebrates some unique aspect of that community and the Festival....

, wherein participants made processions around their city with the beast to be sacrifice

Sacrifice

Sacrifice is the offering of food, objects or the lives of animals or people to God or the gods as an act of propitiation or worship.While sacrifice often implies ritual killing, the term offering can be used for bloodless sacrifices of cereal food or artifacts...

d.

The word is composed of ambio ("I go around"), or of amb or ambu, an ancient preposition signifying "around", and urbs, "city".

Hence, also, we have amburbiales victimæ, the victims carried along in the procession, and afterwards sacrificed.

Scaliger

Joseph Justus Scaliger

Joseph Justus Scaliger was a French religious leader and scholar, known for expanding the notion of classical history from Greek and Ancient Roman history to include Persian, Babylonian, Jewish and Ancient Egyptian history.-Early life:He was born at Agen, the tenth child and third son of Italian...

, in his notes on Festus

Sextus Pompeius Festus

Sextus Pompeius Festus was a Roman grammarian, who probably flourished in the later 2nd century AD, perhaps at Narbo in Gaul.He made an epitome in 20 volumes of the encyclopedic treatise in many volumes De verborum significatu, of Verrius Flaccus, a celebrated grammarian who flourished in the...

, maintains the amburbia to be the same as ambarvalia

Ambarvalia

Ambarvalia was a Roman agricultural fertility riteheld at the end of May in honor of Ceres.At these festivals they sacrificed a bull, a sow, and a sheep, which, before the sacrifice, were led in procession thrice around the fields; whence the feast is supposed to have taken its name, ambio, I go...

.